“National Poetry Month” #11: Cara Benson

from (made)

Pile of feathers like raked leaves every child dives into and tosses up to fall as wings between arms and waist. Gathered mounds about the yard. White goose. Soft, not scratchy like autumn. The trees bare their envy and mothers call their birds in to dinner. Nests, eggs, and basted dinner. Hungrier in the colder weather. Bowls of smashed turnips pale orange an early hangover in the season. Tousled forelocks then back out to run in the dark, the houselights stretching yellow-white boxes across the unwrapped yard. Carcass under the eaves. Bats look like certain birds, though they shoot through the night with a pumping propulsion that gives them away. Otherwise, they would pass.

What bones to be found. A brother’s protection is so limited.
There is no angel he fancies, not anymore.

breathing

The above poem comes from Cara’s 2010 book (made), which the Huffington Post said: “Benson does more with the two-word sentence than many poets do in two stanzas or even two poems, largely because it would be difficult to find even a single wasted word….Very highly recommend.” You can catch Benson in Toronto tonight at this reading, or tomorrow afternoon at this workshop.

CARA BENSON is the author of the prose poetry book, (made), of which the Huffington Post writes: “Benson does more with the two-word sentence than many poets do in two stanzas or even two poems, largely because it would be difficult to find even a single wasted word….Very highly recommend.” Other writing has appeared in the New York Times, Boston Review, and Best American Poetry. Benson is recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry and author of the chapbooks Cara Benson and Quantum Chaos and Poems: A Manifest(o)ation, which won the bpNichol Chapbook Award.